He doesn't Heal Stupid, and Neither Do I

I just got through reading this. Well, actually I read it on Monday, but I had a slew of posts I was working on for my blog which I wanted to get out to you imaginary reader folk first.

Anyway, I liked this one. I like blogs like that, simple and having a point, I wish I made posts here like that... [sigh].

So, yes, anyway, did you know I played a healer in WoW? I actually played two, an 80 Druid in WotL and a long term 60 (end game back then) priest. And I never had a phrase to match what my feelings about the healing role in WoW is like... and it is pretty much summed up as “I don't heal stupid”.

The problem I had with the game was that before the dungeon finder one could pretty much always find a place in a group or PUG as a healer. And because it took an amount of time [usually] to get into a group the members of that group [again usually] had a decent amount of respect for one another's time.

But, I did find as dungeons got better known, and tactics got more widely known, as dungeons got Heroic Badge incentives and finally as they got the Dungeon Finder that respect was lost.

Oh sure, as the healer I still had to respect the asshat paladin tank who was chain pulling, and trying to explain to me why he was able to chain pull with his high DPS and Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. But he'd not want to listen to my explaining, I have this blue bar, and it has 22,000 mana points in it, and I need to drink and have some blue in it... Yes, I know you have one too Mr Paladin Sir, but yours has 2500 points of mana in it and takes one sip of the water Madame Mage made us to fill.

So, I started to build a list of personal rules for healing, I always enjoyed how no matter what you suggested to a bad group, the less they listened, the more they died, the more they blamed the healer... its like some perverse WoW equivalent of Goodwin's Law... the worse the group is, the more they blame the healer/tank/state of society/global warming and not their own screamingly obvious stupidity.

In my experience this was generally exacerbated as people didn't want to admit any tiny lack of knowledge... like not knowing was some sort of stigma... “Do you know the tactics for this boss fight?” [Tumble weed] “okay, go”. [Wipe] “What the hell healer, why didn't you heal me?”.... erm... maybe because I was silenced / shocked / wrapped in webs / turned into a turtle / around the corner / at the top of the steps you ran down while feared [delete as appropriate] and you 'tard face were not paying attention to anything but your solo approach to this multi-player game.

I got so tired of this, I left WoW... and all other MMO's... I'm trying to avoid returning to it...

Other posts spawned on the interwebs from the blog above include this rather nice addition from The Grouchy Gamer.